Arch Linux

rfischer1984

Member

Registered: 2012-03-25

Posts: 11

Is it beneficial to use ATI's drivers over open source ones?

Ok. I have 2 hd 5700 series graphic cards. And I installed ATI's drivers. And the biggest difference I see is I do have an option to use crossfire which I really don't need in the Linux side. And my fan runs a lot quiter.  Does that mean my card is running cooler or just better fan management?  Anyways I am having glitches every once In a while and gdm doesn't always look right. Should I just switch back to open source drivers or do I have something set wrong on my computer?  Thanks.

Lone_Wolf

Member

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,911

Re: Is it beneficial to use ATI's drivers over open source ones?

power management is much better in catalyst driver then in the OSS drivers, so the card is likely cooler and uses less power.
Another advantage is that the catalyst performs better/faster / support higher OpenGL versions.

Disadvantages of the catalyst driver are the need to rebuild it at almost every kernel update, and it very often lags behind in supporting Xorg versions.

The OSS drivers have improved very fast over the last years, and continue to do so. They also need very little manual work on pacman -Syu.

I have used the OSS drivers on my desktop (HD 4890) and laptop (Xpress 1100) for over 2 years now, and never felt the need to switch to catalyst.
(i use the laptop 90% of the time plugged in, so battery life time is not an issue for me).

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

rfischer1984

Member

Registered: 2012-03-25

Posts: 11

Re: Is it beneficial to use ATI's drivers over open source ones?

Thanks, i actually just found out that steam now runs on my ATI drivers. wouldnt work with the open source drivers. Which was interesting. Now I am going to see what games run on it. If i can play some of my games on there, i may never use the windows partition again.lol

nomilieu

Member

Registered: 2010-07-03

Posts: 133

Re: Is it beneficial to use ATI's drivers over open source ones?

Using Catalyst with Arch is asking for pain. I used to attempt it, but they stopped supporting the card in my laptop, and they are nearly always lagging behind in X version support. It's really not upkept in a timely enough fashion for my tastes, so I use the open driver for Linux and just play games with Windows.

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F@H